GPS Poor on Droid X

[dcrichmond]

I just purchase a DroidX (It was hard to get). My GPS is very intermittent. Drops the signal often and has trouble locking onto the satellite. Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas?

Thanks

[Padron26]

I had a bad experience with google maps last week. It would show the location that I wanted on the map, but it wouldn't give me directions to the same place. This also happened on the tp2 google maps a few times.
never had the gps locking problem. Just make sure you have your location settings set.

I started a thread on the dropping signal. I still have the problem but not nearly as much, I've also payed attention to the same signal problem on other forums, hopefully the "official" 2.2 update will help. Basically the base band update.

[kevmueller]

I have not had a problem with the GPS on my X. I use it almost daily when I go for a run. I usually have a lock within a minute and then it never losses me.

[flmgo57]

I just get my Droidx last week and so far the GPS has worked great for me. Much better than my TP. Iy locks on in 1 minute or less.

[goracer]

I had this issue over the weekend. I found out on the way back the only way it works correctly is to use the nav app. If you go through the map app it keeps saying looking for gps signal. It also gets stuck and doesn't update your location. Oh and does not give voice commands. Another sucky droid doesn't is if you get sent an adress via text then touching it does nothing. You can't even copy and paste.

Motorola's stance is to tell former BB users to go back to blackberry.

[nursecosmo]

Does the Droid X have a real GPS reciever or is it aGPS like some of the cheaper phones? I have the same question regarding the D2 as well.

[blazingwolf]

aGPS is a real GPS. See here: Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[nursecosmo]

Originally Posted by blazingwolf

aGPS is a real GPS. See here: Assisted GPS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for your Wikipedia link but I'm well aware of what aGPS is. I don't consider aGPS to be real GPS devices because when there is no cell signal most of them cannot acquire a fix, or they take so long as to be unusable. None of the phones with aGPS which I have played with work in my area, where half the time I have no cell signal. To quote the above Wiki article..."Some A-GPS devices cannot fall back to standard GPS, needing cell tower or internet signal as these A-GPS devices won't function with only GPS satellite signal." In my experience, it should say most aGPS devices cannot fall back to standard GPS.

There was a link in the above article which listed both the D2 and the X as aGPS units. Perhaps I should have asked; Has anyone verified whether their GPS chips work off of the cell grid? Thanks.

[blazingwolf]

Never been an issue for me with the aGPS devices that I have used. Yes, your right it can take awhile but that is not unusual in any device that uses straight GPS. HAd to wait a few minutes the other day for my Garmin device to properly sync with the sats where I live.

I do not own a Droid X so can't speak for it specifically but I do own a Droid 1 and I have not had any issues catching a GPS lock with no cell phone coverage. You would obviously need a GPS program that can work offline also like Igo. You could always cruise down to the verizon store and load Igo and then go in to plane mode and see what happens.

One other thing to think about. Some devices need the phone radio to be on to power the circuit that powers GPS. I had this with my Samsung Omnia.

Hope this helps.

[kevmueller]

Not that this may help much, but I was out playing golf this weekend and used one of the apps on the market with my GPS for distances and the thing was spot on accurate. I was on the cell grid, but had no problems using this. On a 3 1/2 hour round it only used 30% of my battery as well, which I thought was great.